There are 2 kinds of people: those who think everyone is the same and those who think there are 2 kinds of people.

But seriously folks…

There are those who place “shoulds” high on their motivations and those who don’t. But as is normal on the 3 lower planes, there are no absolutes and people are on a spectrum regarding a particular subject, the spectrum from “must do” to “don’t worry about it”.

It depends on the subject—it is quite an individual thing, what we consider important. It would be interesting to categorize a person by where he/she falls on the spectrum for a subject, 0 for don’t care and 100 for must do.

Actually I already did this test in college. I made up a list of 20 reasons for doing something, including religion, fair play, etc. and went around asking around 50 other students to rank the items by importance. And as expected, the results were all over the place. But the real learning for me was when I tried to give the test to a couple of my professors, and they both said they couldn’t take it. Why? Because their rankings would depend on the situation. I recognized the voices of wisdom and gave it up.

There are the shoulds of survival, shoulds of happiness, shoulds of truth, shoulds of status, shoulds of religion, and the shoulds of culture, and many more. Some shoulds are more universal and some are definitely relative based on the situation.

Why is this inquiry important to me? Because as an incarnation of my soul, I want to be free to be as true to my potentials as possible, free to be able to fulfill my potentials this lifetime. And “shoulds” get in the way. So I allow myself the luxury of reducing my “shoulds” to those absolutely important to me.

What is important to me? I think Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs applies here: the basic physiological and safety needs, the psychological belongingness/love and esteem needs, and the self-actualization needs.

For me personally, I tend to be on the low end of the spectrum for the psychological needs, don’t really care about belonging and esteem.

If we are going to be accepted into a tribe, the psychological needs are important, but basically I don’t care much, which means I ignore cultural rules a lot. Not accidentally, my wife Yani is the same. So we have no problem living in an apartment building with long hallways and lots of unmarked doors.

When Yani and I got married in St. Augustine, we took my parents along as our witnesses and went to the city hall for our papers, went next door to the chapel for the quick ceremony, and then went to a nice lunch overlooking Salt Run—it was a lot of fun. I did do one “should”, I bought pin-on flowers for my new wife and mother on the way there.

And our lack of caring did matter a couple months later. Yani and I went to her immigration hearing to get her green-card. We had a lot of pictures of both of us and her wonderful guided tour for me of Indonesia, which the immigration man looked at. Then he asked, “Where are your wedding pictures?” Yani and I looked at each other and said simultaneously, “Pictures?” He passed her anyway, I guess he equated my long hair with allowable strangeness.

We can now see how important wedding pictures are. We live across from a building which hosts around 2 weddings a week on the roof, at least in the summer. And it is quite clear who the most important functionary is at these weddings, and it isn’t the priest. It is just amazing the hoops the photographer puts everyone through.

I am not saying that having pictures is bad, just that for Yani and me, it is a “should” which we gladly omit, not even taking pictures of our adventures together anymore—living in the here and now, not thinking about the future.

Our “shoulds” are pretty high when it comes to karmic situations and also to basic pleasantness. But after that, we don’t have many “shoulds”.